1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of telecommunications. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for presenting billing information to a customer in accordance with a hierarchal structure defined by the customer.
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
2. Acronyms
The written description provided herein contains acronyms that refer to various telecommunications services, components and techniques, as well as features relating to the present invention. Although some of these acronyms are known, use of these acronyms is not strictly standardized in the art. For purposes of the written description herein, acronyms will be defined as follows:
Account Management (AM)                Accounts Payable (A/P)        Accounts Receivable (A/R)        Billing Account Number (BAN)        Billing Data Repository (BDR)        Billing Pilot Project 2 (BPP2)        Billing Telephone Number (BTN)        Business Information Manager (BIM)        Convergent Bill (CB)        Customer Account Payment Management (CAPM)        Electronic Billing Analysis Tool (eBAT)        Enterprise Billing Pilot Project 2 (E-BPP2)        Input Interface Record (IIR)        Input Interface Record Create Unit (ICU)        Working Telephone Number (WTN)        
3. Description of Background Information
Corporations typically receive large telephone bills for charges incurred by their personnel from various departments and divisions. Large corporations have hundreds of departments and divisions that may be located in numerous cities. Further, some customers are serviced by more than one telecommunications carrier and as a result receive multiple bills. Consequently, the functions of auditing and monitoring telephone charges can be challenging.
Known telephone billing systems offer customers very little flexibility in terms of how the data is presented and how it may be managed and manipulated. Customers would appreciate the option of defining the structure of their telephone bill in advance so that the arrangement of their bill meets the needs of the company. For instance, the customer may define the format of their bill according to company specific criteria, such as internal processes, business structure, geographic location, etc. Similarly, customers would like to be able to view charges by employee, by department, or by any other unit.
A single bill including all of the customer's telecommunications charges and presented according to the customer's criteria would provide invaluable assistance to corporate personnel responsible for the auditing, management, and fiscal oversight functions of the company.
The prior art is deficient in this area. The present invention overcomes the problems associated with the prior art.